Bob Fosse, Lenny Bruce, Honey and Kitty Bruce, and Fosse’s Bleak as Hell Biopic Lenny

LENNY 

(Bob Fosse, USA, 1974, rated R, 

111 mins) 

"He never served any time, and he never paid any fine. He only paid with his life."--Howard Solomon, owner of the Cafe Au Go Go

Kitty Bruce, the only daughter of Lenny Bruce, passed away this month at the age of 70. Like her father and mother, Kitty struggled with drug abuse, but unlike Lenny, she kicked the habit and went on to become the keeper of his flame, overseeing every project involving his work with tact, taste, and understanding. Lenny was unlucky in many ways, but he was fortunate to have a devoted daughter who looked after his legacy with such care. 

Whether he was lucky to be immortalized by Bob Fosse, in a film released eight years after his 1966 death from a morphine overdose, is another story. Kitty, as a character, plays only a small role in the biopic, but it's an authorized portrait, and both daughter and ex-wife served as advisors. 

Fosse's third feature, an adaptation of screenwriter Julian Barry's 1971 stage play, begins with a pale, frame-filling closeup of a narrow-lipped mouth. Lenny's fame rests primarily on the things he said--things that offended straight society and small-minded vice cops--so it must surely be his mouth. It isn't. The mouth belongs to Honey, played by former showgirl Valerie Perrine. 

This bait-and-switch establishes that though Fosse will be focusing on Lenny, the more famous member of the duo, he prioritizes Honey's perspective, and not due to any feminist impulse on his part, but because she outlived her ex-husband, and throughout the film, she reflects on their relationship to a tape recorder wielded by an unseen interviewer--voiced by Bob Fosse. 

Harriet Jolliff, aka "Hot Honey Harlow," was working as a stripper in 1951 when she met the former Arnold Schneider (Dustin Hoffman back for more grit after Straw Dogs), who was working as a comedian, but the screenplay neglects to mention that he was also serving in the Merchant Marine after a stint in the Navy. (Tony Award winner Cliff Gorman, Broadway's "Lenny," played the Lenny-via-Hoffman standup comedian in Fosse's All That Jazz.) 

Two months before Kitty, Valerie Perrine passed away at 82, whereas her now-88-year-old costar remains active, most recently appearing in Daniel Roher's Tuner (though accused by several women of sexual harassment in 2017, Hoffman has faced no significant repercussions). Most Perrine obituaries led with Richard Donner's Superman, in which she played Lex Luthor's main squeeze, and it's understandable--the 1978 movie was her biggest hit--but Fosse gave her her best role. For her efforts, she was awarded Best Actress at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.  

It wouldn't have been in character for the director to depict Lenny's childhood, and he doesn't. Consequently, I don't recall any mention of his UK-born, podiatrist father, Mickey. Instead, Fosse introduces him as an aspiring standup emceeing strip shows around New York (much as Fosse did, in Chicago, in his younger days). It wasn't Lenny's ultimate goal, but he enjoyed looking at the scantily-clad ladies, so it wasn't exactly the worst gig in the world, and without it, he wouldn't have met his first and only wife. 

Fosse also presents Lenny's ancestral home as one dominated by women, especially his supportive mother, Sally Marr (Jan Miner), also a comedian. 

Sally shares her flat with his aunt, who isn't as supportive of his use of profanity or his shiksa stripper fiancée, leading to moments of levity in a film that isn't all that funny--including Lenny's act, which plays like on-screen narration, since it's so intensely autobiographical. (As Fosse told Hoffman when he asked, "I don't think Lenny Bruce is funny.") I mean, Roger Ebert wasn't wrong when he wrote, "We get, instead, a sort of hostile therapist who preaches liberation through the defusing of highly charged words."

The results are insightful, to be sure, and Hoffman is a convincing stage performer, but Lenny has got to be one of the least funny A-list films about a comedian ever made, and not just because of the bleak, tabloid way he died. 

True to Fosse's form, though, it's never boring! It's also beautiful in its ugliness. Bruce Surtees, who received one of the film's six Oscar nominations, shot the entire thing in high contrast black and white, and many sequences--especially the last--play like crime-scene photographs come to life. Fosse also peopled Lenny's stripshow audiences with sweaty, leering, pock-marked faces, recalling Diane Arbus's queasy work. To quote Sean Baker, "B&W cinematography and production design is A+...and the editing by Alan Heim has the rhythm of a Lenny Bruce stand-up show." 

Initially, Honey is the star, and Surtees shoots an early striptease from a low angle as if she were a goddess. Perrine shines like a diamond, much as Jessica Lange would in Fosse's All That Jazz five years later. Or Mariel Hemingway in 1983's Star 80, his final film. In the early-1950s, though, Lenny was just a schlemiel, a schlimazel--to quote Laverne & Shirley--stumbling through showbiz impressions for an audience of hard-drinking, chain-smoking manly men who just wanted to watch ladies disrobe. The well scrubbed, mixed-gender, collegiate record buyers would come later. 

It isn't an auspicious start, but Honey finds Lenny "cute" and "huggable"--and he can't take his eyes off the statuesque glamor gal. There's a sequence in a diner in which he stares and stares, but what should be creepy really isn't, even as Honey, dining with an older comedian, coyly pretends not to notice. 

Fosse presents their entire courtship as intensely romantic--rooms filled with flowers and the whole bit--amidst the squalor of their surroundings. 

In short order, they put together a double act, but it doesn't really take off, so Honey returns to stripping despite Lenny's increasing discomfort with the male attention she attracts. They need the money, and though it isn't exactly an excuse, he understands the impossible situation he has put her in, admitting on stage, "That's where the conflict starts! We all want for a wife a combination Sunday school teacher and $500-a-night hooker."

He may have old fashioned notions about women, but Lenny's no-holds-barred approach to comedy proves so far ahead of its time that older comedians, like a Milton Berle-type, insist he clean up his act. In the film, he does nothing to curry their favor, which might have helped his prospects, except he's honest to a fault and refuses to kiss up to sleazy old men who grope his wife, so it's fortunate he has an agent, Arnie (producer Stanley Beck), to look out for him (Barry based the character on Alan Sobel). 

Lenny's rise through the ranks is marked by more downs than ups. 

When he and Honey are in a serious automobile accident, for instance, and she lands in the hospital with her pretty face bandaged-up like Rock Hudson in Seconds--and where she develops a taste for morphine--he has a fling with a candy striper. Fosse doesn't depict anything untoward, but Honey figures it out soon enough. 

She recovers, and the two push on to Detroit before ending in California. By this point, they're both addicted to heroin. In 1955, Harriet gives birth to Kitty, but their marriage continues to falter, and they split two years later. 

Left to her own devices, Honey's life completely unravels, and she ends up serving a two-year bid for possession. Fosse proceeds to depict Lenny as his daughter's caretaker, which wasn't the case at all--his mother took her in. 

While Honey is doing time, Lenny releases records and buys a house in the Hollywood Hills--thanks to Steve Allen and Hugh Hefner, he also makes several television appearances, which Fosse omits--but the high times don't last long. Just as Honey is getting her shit together, he starts to lose his. 

Other than one disastrous gig that plays for an uninterrupted seven minutes, Fosse speeds through this period mercifully quickly--unlike Robert B. Weide's detail-oriented 1998 documentary--though Lenny's troubles went on for years. It isn't just the drugs, but a string of arrests for narcotics and obscenity that exacerbate his paranoid tendencies. Granted, he had every right to feel persecuted: one arrest was for saying the word "schmuck" on stage--schmuck! In truth, it wasn't so much about the profanity so much as his outspoken opinions about the Vietnam War and the Catholic Church. 

It's hard to watch, and Fosse has no interest in exploring the politics of the situation--I don't recall any mention of the War or the Church–but the reality is even worse than the bummer he depicts. At the end of his life, Lenny wasn't slim and trim like Hoffman, but bloated and barely comprehensible. 

Fosse's film ends when Lenny does: with the comedian, naked, stretched out on the floor of the house he was about to lose. Though alone when he died, he had a housemate and a fiancée, except they're excised from the picture, and Fosse doesn't even cushion the blow with an intertitle or two.

I was 10 when I saw Lenny for the first time. 

My father, a fan of the comedian, took me to the film upon its original release. Near as I can tell, it never occurred to him that it might not be suitable for a child--and thank God for that. I only saw my divorced dad, who lived on the Left Coast, once a year, and I welcomed any insight into his preoccupations, no matter how dark. Nor was it a passing phase. Thirty years later, he gifted me with Lenny Bruce - Let the Buyer Beware, a six-CD boxed set compiled by Hal Willner with assistance from Kitty Bruce and Lenny producer Marvin Worth.

So, I've always had a special place in my heart for this grim, if beautifully-crafted picture. Dad held truth-to-power guys, like Lenny and Richard Pryor, in high regard, and it's especially sad to think that today's truth-tellers are facing similar reprisals--not so much through the courts, but through politically-motivated cancellations--simply for describing things as they are. 

After Lenny's death, Honey Bruce published a 1976 memoir, remarried, and built a new life for herself in Hawaii. None of this is mentioned in Lenny. It all happened years later, and doesn't have much to do with the story Fosse chose to tell: the story of a man as seen, primarily, by the woman who loved and lost him. But the love continued in its way as Honey and Kitty, with the assistance of petitioners Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Robin Williams, worked to clear his name, and in 2003, they secured a posthumous pardon from New York Governor George Pataki. Honey died two years later. 

With the passing of Kitty Bruce, who didn't have any children, Lenny's bloodline comes to an end, but Lenny lives on as an acid-tinged portrait of the vital necessity--and terrible fragility--of free speech rights in America.

Lenny, in a new 4K digital restoration, is out now on The Criterion Collection on Blu-ray and 4K+Blu-ray with a 2015 commentary track from Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo (from the Twilight Time release), a new interview with Alan Heim, a new essay from Mark Harris, and archival interviews with Bob Fosse in print and Dustin Hoffman and Valerie Perrine on French TV. 

Images: the IMDb (Hoffman's eyes, Perrine's mouth, the two together, Perrine with Jan Miner, and Perrine in the hospital), Valerie Perrine / Facebook (on stage), and Dangerous Minds (Honey, Kitty, and Lenny Bruce).

Lost and Found Family-Oriented Film Reviews: Graduation and Rachel Getting Married

I wrote these now-revived reviews for Amazon and 

The Stranger. 

The review of Rachel Getting Married dropped off Amazon after awhile, though several versions of the DVD remain for sale; this tends to happen with consistently re-released home videos. Graduation, on the other hand, remains on The Stranger site, but the last third got cut off for some odd reason.

GRADUATION 

(Cristian Mungiu, Romania, 2016, 128 minutes) 

It's tragic that some kids don't get enough love. It's even more tragic that some don't get any at all, but Romanian master Cristian Mungiu's Graduation takes on a father whose love turns toxic when put to the test.

The shift from benevolent protector to poisonous antagonist occurs after an unknown assailant attacks Eliza (Maria Dragus from Michael Haneke's anti-fascist fable The White Ribbon). Granted, Romeo (Adrian Titieni, who recalls Belgian everydad Olivier Gourmet) is less of a model citizen than he appears. He's a control freak and an adulterer, but Eliza is one scholarship away from attending Cambridge, and she has to ace her exams, so the respected physician calls in favors and encourages her to play along.

It goes against everything for which he and his perma-fatigued librarian wife, Magda (Lia Bugnar), raised their only child: to reject the corruption that characterizes Romania, a country Mungiu portrays as a post-communist wasteland of Brutalist buildings and parched greenery.

Just as Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne directed Gourmet as the ultimate bad-good dad in 1993's The Promise--with Jérémie Renier as his son--DP Tudor Vladimir Panduru frequently depicts Romeo from the back such that his body speaks for him in a way his face and voice can't, reinforcing the constraints of his environment (fittingly, the Dardennes served as co-producers). 

Graduation isn't as harrowing as Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days or Beyond the Hills, but it's just as unsettling in a more restrained register.   

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED

(Jonathan Demme, USA, 2008, 108 minutes) 

Pitched somewhere between Robert Altman's A Wedding and Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding--but more cautiously optimistic than either--Rachel Getting Married marks a change in course for Jonathan Demme. Granted, few Oscar-winning directors have walked a more diverse path. 

After a series of documentaries and remakes, The Silence of the Lambs filmmaker tries his hand at the intimate chamber drama, and with the help of actress Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada) and actress-turned-screenwriter Jenny Lumet, daughter of director Sidney, he pulls it off.

The festivities kick into high gear once Kym (Hathaway, with smeared eyeliner and unkempt, blunt-cut hair) takes a break from rehab for her sister's big day. It soon transpires that Kym, who hides her wounded soul behind a veil of sarcasm, serves as the Buchman's resident black sheep. The problems go deeper than drugs to a tragedy in which she played a part.  

As Kym, Rachel (Mad Men's Rosemary DeWitt), their parents (Bill Irwin and Debra Winger), groom Sidney (TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe), and the rest of the bohemian Connecticut brood struggle with the past, the nuptials continue, graced by performances from past Demme collaborators, like Sister Carol East (Something Wild) and Robyn Hitchcock (Storefront Hitchcock). The hours between the reception and after-party toggle between humor, affection, and painful revelation. 

In the film's production notes, Demme claims that he and cinematographer Declan Quinn (In America) attempted to make a film that looked like "The most beautiful home movie ever made." By using handheld cameras and focusing on believably flawed characters, they've done just that.

Images from the IMDb (Adrian Titieni and Maria Dragus in Graduation and Anne Hathaway, Rosemary DeWitt, Tunde Adebimpe, and Mather Zickel in Rachel Getting Married) and RogerEbert.com (Hathaway and DeWitt).

SIFF Dispatch #7: Music, Movement, and Community in Sky Hopinka's Powwow People

POWWOW PEOPLE
(Sky Hopinka, USA, 2025,
88 minutes)

It takes a village to make a feature, and Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk, Pechanga) assembled the equivalent to make Powwow People; one in front of the camera and the other behind the scenes. 

Adam Piron (Kiowa, Mohawk), Sterlin Harjo (Seminole, Muscogee)--the creator of Reservation Dogs and The Lowdown–and other prominent Native American figures helped to produce the documentary, Hopinka's second full-length after 2020's maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore. 

Danny Glover's Louverture Films, known for backing projects of cultural importance, also loaned their support. Julian Brave NoiseCat (Secwepemc), the co-director of 2024's Sugarcane, even shows up as a dancer in the film. 

Since 2014, Ferndale-born Hopinka has worked primarily on short films, seven of which Seattle Film Critics Society presented on May 15 at Northwest Film Forum (below right). Eric Zhu, who put together the program, also presented Hopinka with SFCS's John Hartl Pacific Northwest Spotlight Award on May 17 after a SIFF screening of Powwow People. 

Hopinka built his second feature, which premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival, around an opportunity he created in 2023 for Indigenous singers, dancers, and drummers to come together to celebrate their culture, knowing that he would be documenting the whole thing for posterity.

Though the film plays as one day, the event took place from August 22-24 at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Seattle. Throughout, Hopinka shows the hard work and camaraderie that goes into putting together a powwow, an event with which another recent Pacific Northwest feature culminates: Fancy Dance from Erica Tremblay (Seneca–Cayuga Nation) with Lily Gladstone (Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce), first recipient of the John Hartl Award. 

As a structuring and thematic device, Hopinka follows four individuals: the down-to-Earth Gina Bluebird-Stacona (Oglala Lakota), who works on setup, the avuncular Ruben Little Head (Northern Cheyenne), the master of ceremonies, the soft-spoken Jamie John (Anishinaabe), a jingle dress dancer, and Cozad (Kiowa), a family drum group named after the gracious Freddie Cozad, a veteran drummer who had hoped to attend. He passed away that November, but Hopinka interviewed him earlier in the spring about powwowing, and his words form part of the communal voice-over.  

It says something about the Pacific Northwest that there's so much tribal diversity, though some participants came from as far away as Alberta. 

In his opening remarks, Little Head makes it clear that trans and nonbinary members are welcome--Jamie John describes themselves as gender non-conforming--which recalls Hopinka's Standing Rock short "Dislocation Blues," in which speaker Shaawan Francis Keahna (White Earth Band of Minnesota Ojibwe and Meskwaki) identifies as nonbinary. 

Bearings established, the bulk of the film plays as a riot of color, movement, and sound. Beyond the singers, dancers, and drummers, vendors sell food ("Navajo Fry Bread & Tacos" reads one sign), jewelry, and other handmade items, from t-shirts and hoodies to salmon for two dollars an ounce. 

I particularly enjoyed the free-spirited dancing of the Tiny Tots; most in Native regalia, but a few in conventional summer clothes. Some dance in a traditional manner, others just bop about to "Old McDonald Had a Farm" performed on tribal drums--and all receive "day money" for their efforts.    

I'm sure most of these dancers would perform for cultural and social reasons without the lure of awards, but dancers in every category qualify for prizes including retro jackets and cash--adults can win as much as $4,000. The film ends with an unbroken 30-minute take centered on an elimination round, adding a little tension to Hopinka's pure cinema approach.  

New Mexico filmmaker Shaandiin Tome (Diné) served as cinematographer, while Hopinka provided additional camera work. The results prove less experimental than I expected based on his short films, but there's always something engaging happening on screen. In his work as a whole, he sometimes blurs images while transitioning from one sequence to another. 

In the case of Powwow People, he mostly applies the blurring to the bright, beaded, shimmering, and feathered costumes. It's a lovely effect. 

Other than the voices in the film and a few on-screen inter-titles, Hopinka doesn't spell anything out explicitly, so Powwow People works more as an experiential documentary than an educational one by allowing viewers to see and hear what it might be like to attend or participate in a powwow. 

I wouldn’t have minded subtitles for song lyrics, but I suspect he left them off intentionally, since there's more focus on sounds than words. Beyond the drumming and chanting, others include the ringing metal of the jingle dancers' outfits. 

Of Hopinka's short films, Powwow People most closely resembles 2017's Dislocation Blues and 2021's Kicking the Clouds, particularly when speakers share memories of their ancestors. The film, as a whole, serves as a form of collective memory by capturing ancestral traditions on film while simultaneously creating new ancestral memories for future generations.

Click here for more SIFF 2026 coverage, starting with Mārama.  

There are no more Seattle-area screenings scheduled for Powwow People, but I'll update this post when that changes, streaming opportunities included. Images from Museum of Modern Art, Me (Sky Hopinka), Seattle Met (Ruben Little Head), Michael Sicinski (Tiny Tot), and In Review Online.      

SIFF Dispatch #6: Post-Millennial Mockumentary Meets ‘70s Surrealism in Lady

LADY 

(Samuel Abrahams, UK, 2026, 87 minutes) 

There's nothing quite like the loneliness of the super-rich. 

Instead of opening themselves up to real, human connections, they believe that if they just keep throwing money at the problem--any problem--it will go away. 

That sort of thinking applies to Lady Isabella (Sian Clifford, Fleabag, The Ballad of Wallis Island), mistress of Ravenhyde Hall, who has fashioned herself as a philanthropist, patron of the arts, and friend to the ravens, especially her passerine pal, Ricky (the film was shot on location at Suffolk's Somerleyton Hall, one of The Crown's luxurious royal settings). 

Laurie Kynaston's Sam, a BAFTA-nominated director–much like Samuel Abrahams--meets up with Izzie for the purposes of a profile. She claims that Netflix initiated the project, but she's cagey about the details. She's cagey about a lot of things, and even her housekeeper, Becky (Juliet Cowan), the only other person in the 26-room mansion, seems skittish around her. 

Left: Sian Clifford with creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag

Granted, Sam isn't quite as stable as he appears, but Izzie isn't just a lonely narcissistic lush. There's something weird going on with her body, and she would prefer not to talk about it. At first, Netflix isn't interested when Sam reaches out, but the weirdness captures their attention, and the project becomes official. 

Sam dedicates himself to solving the mystery. It isn't just about Izzie's ego, but his own, since he believes the profile could put his name on the map--it's possible Abrahams felt the exact same way about his directorial debut.  

In the process, the quasi-fictional Sam gets more than he bargained for, since Izzie, whose husband has been working abroad, isn't just looking for someone to validate her existence, but an artistic collaborator--and possibly a lover, too. Loopy as she is, she's more forceful than the passive Sam, who proves powerless to resist her entreaties, professional ethics be damned. 

Abrahams made Lady in the style of The Office–both versions–in which characters speak to the camera, though we never see the crew, just Samuel, Izzie, and Becky. The director also appears to have taken cues from Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and the Maysles Brothers' Grey Gardens, since Izzie has Little Edie-like delusions of grandeur yet there's real tragedy underpinning her eccentricities, though Sam has more in common with William Holden in the former than Big Edie in the latter.

For most of its running time, the plot mechanics feel scripted, while the dialogue feels improvised (Abrahams wrote the film with his partner, Miranda Campbell Bowling). Sian Clifford fully commits to the intentionally varied tones, and she's very good, though Lady never quite worked for me as a comedy. I found it best, or most interesting, when Abrahams leaned into surrealism. It's also quite beautifully shot by Korsshan Schlauer in the style of weirdo European manor films, like Louis Malle's 1975 Black Moon. 

Granted, Abrahams ultimately sympathizes--and wants you to sympathize, too--with the loneliness of this one particular super-rich person who isn't quite as shallow as she seems, though she isn't all that deep or talented either. In the hands--mild spoiler!--of a performer other than the go-for-broke Sian Clifford, it might not have worked, not least since Sam can grow tiresome, but it does. 

Clifford is the kind of supporting actress who has long deserved a starring role, which Samuel Abrahams has given her, and Lady's shift from familiar mockumentary beats to something darker and stranger elevates both character and film. I hope it leads to more starring roles in her future.

Click here for SIFF 2026 Dispatch #7: Music, Movement, and Community in Sky Hopinka's Powwow People.

 

Lady plays Sat, May 16, 3:30pm and Sun, May 17, 11:30am at the Uptown. Director Samuel Abrahams scheduled to attend the May 16 screening.  

 

Images from MetFilm Studio / Loud and Clear Reviews (Sian Clifford and Laurie Kynaston), BBC (Clifford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag), The Guardian (Clifford as seen by Samuel Abrahams), and screen shot from the film of one of the bizarre, unexplained interstitials between sequences. 

SIFF 2026 Dispatch #5: Times of Trouble (and Sparks of Joy) in Body Blow and Valentina

BODY BLOW 

(Dean Francis, Australia, 2025, 99 minutes) 

Aiden (Tim Pocock, who suggests an Aussie Dylan O'Brien) gets up in the morning, does his pushups, downs a raw egg Rocky-style, irons his clothes, listens to a YouTuber pontificate about the power of the penis, and leaves for his first day as a queer undercover cop in Sydney's inner east.

He prepares to do things by the book until pink-haired partner Steele (Sacha Horler), daughter of the former chief, pushes him to cut loose. He starts by cozying up to Cody (Tom Rodgers), a cute, drug-addicted sex worker, landing in a trap set by his drug lord drag queen "daddy" (Paul Capsis).

Aiden feels torn between cop, club, and loose-cannon hottie until one blood-spattered night forces his hand. Body Blow has the look and feel of an '80s, neon-lit, NC-17 erotic thriller. RIYL: Gun Crazy, Love Lies Bleeding, Pillion. 

Body Blow plays Thurs, May 14, 9:30pm at SIFF Downtown and Sun, May 17, 2:15pm at the Uptown. 

VALENTINA 

(Tattijani Ribeiro, 2025, USA, 84 minutes) 

Tatti Ribeiro's lively, funny tribute to community presents a day-in-the-life look at a twentysomething migrant worker. 

 

After crossing from Juarez to El Paso, Valentina (Abbott Elementary's Keyla Monterroso Mejia and her amazing laugh) starts out with $80.13–and three parking tickets. To earn her keep, she takes any under-the-table job she can find, but while engaging in a historical reenactment, her car gets towed, and she needs $280 to get it back. She sells plasma, pawns a family heirloom, and testifies against onerous traffic violation fees at a city council meeting. 

 

An on-screen counter tracks her financial gains and losses, while family members (Juan Carlos and Nathan Monterroso) and other migrants offer support. Ribeiro places the charismatic Mejia in real situations with real people, and inter-cuts newsreel footage about the migrant experience. Props to Jessica Alba for exec producing. Also: don't leave during the end credits! 

 

Click here for SIFF 2026 Dispatch #6: Post-Millennial Mockumentary Meets ‘70s Surrealism in Lady.

 

Valentina plays Thurs, May 14, 5:30pm at the Uptown and Fri, May 15, at SIFF Film Center. Co-writer/director Tatti Ribeiro scheduled to attend.

Images: Neon Splatter (main cast) and IMDb (Keyla Monterroso Mejia).

SIFF 2026 Dispatch #4: Music Heals in Radioheart: The Drive & Times of DJ Kevin Cole

RADIOHEART: THE DRIVE AND TIMES OF DJ KEVIN COLE
(Peter Hilgendorf and Andrew Franks, USA, 2026, 83 minutes) 

And there goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
--Tom Petty, "The Last DJ" (2002)

I've been listening to Kevin Cole on KEXP since he first hit the airwaves.  

Before that, I was involved with the station as a disc jockey, promotions director, music director, and host of the jazz show, Straight No Chaser--though not all at the same time. Our tenures did not overlap, though I've run into him a few times over the years. Radio people always find each other in the end, even if I've been out of the game for years, and he's still in it. 

As you can probably tell, the profile of a DJ and director of programming from a station I've been listening to since I moved to Seattle in 1988 is bound to hit home, particularly one with which I was once associated. 

Left: me in the KCMU offices with Rachel Crick from Sony, Mike D from the Beastie Boys, and other DJs

A decade later, after gigs at Cellophane Square and Microsoft, I got a job at Amazon, and who was in my orientation group--though we worked in different departments--but Kevin Cole. His reputation as a mover and shaker at Minneapolis's Rev 105 preceded him, and I knew exactly who he was. Consequently, I wasn't completely surprised when he segued to KEXP. 

Which brings me to RADIOHEART: The Drive and Times of DJ Kevin Cole, Pete Hilgendorf's first full-length foray into filmmaking alongside Andrew Franks, an experienced director, editor, and cinematographer (I've also met Pete, and even wrote about a few of the bands he signed in his label days). 

They begin at the beginning with a look at Kevin's life and career in Minneapolis, and they've lined up some heavy hitters: Bob Mould, Jimmy Jam, Kristin Hersh, Twin/Tone co-founder Peter Jesperson--you name it. 

Like many of us who moved into commercial radio, Kevin started out as a college radio DJ and record store worker, and when he got the chance to spin records at First Avenue in the fall of 1978, he took it, but it was trial by fire for a self-described rock guy hired to make people dance, so he started by playing disco before incorporating punk, post-punk, and other styles. 

His goal, then and now, was to play music by every kind of recording artist for the benefit of every kind of listener, which applied to the varied acts that played the downtown club, like homegrown superstar Prince who was so taken with his sets that he hired Kevin to work the decks at his private parties. 

Kevin has mentioned this often on KEXP, and why not. As DJ bragging rights go, it doesn't get much better. (For what it's worth, I sang backup in a one-shot band, put together by my dad's softball buddies, that opened for Prince at San Francisco's Castro Street Fair, circa 1981's Controversy.) 

In his more humble record store days, Kevin hit it off with music aficionado Shawn Stewart (below), who stuck by him even while he was overindulging in cocaine and amphetamines to keep up his breakneck pace, but he would get clean in 1988 and stay clean, and they've been together ever since.

In 1994, Kevin left First Ave to found Rev 105–short for Revolution Radio–and his career as a radio innovator was born. He hired Shawn, among other "relatable, accessible" talents (those of you in Seattle may also remember her from The Mountain and KIRO), but three years later, it was over. 

Long story short: radio is a tough business. Though I left of my own volition after working at five different stations in Alaska and Washington, I don't miss the behind-the-scenes machinations and corporate shenanigans, even if I miss the playing-music part. 

After Rev 105 came to an end, Kevin and Shawn relocated to Seattle where he helped to launch Amazon's music store. Though this might seem like a sellout move, and kind of was, it allowed him to make a new start. He was joined by other music veterans, like writer/publisher Mike McGonigal of Maggot Brain--surely the last person I would describe as a sellout--and both would go on to less mainstream ventures in the years to come. 

Most significantly, in Kevin's case: listener-powered KCMU 90.3 FM. I started volunteering a year after Tom Mara, who would become the station's executive director before retiring in 2022, but I left six years before Kevin came aboard. In 1988, DJs weren't paid. Nor were program, promotions, production, or music directors. That had changed by the time Kevin arrived.

He helped the station to become KEXP, a pioneer in the streaming space that now spans the globe (personally, I consult the real-time playlist often). He also contributed to the realization of remote broadcasts from far-flung locales, among other innovations. The high-tech Seattle Center broadcaster of today has little in common with the low-tech UW one of the past. 

Though RADIOHEART is a film about music, it's also a film about hair! After experimenting with a few different styles, Kevin settled on his current long-haired look, which is as much a part of his identity as his comforting voice. The only difference now is the gray, but it's fun to watch the evolution. 

And it seems likely that his t-shirt collection is nearly as robust as his record collection, which reminded me of Robert Christgau's music and book shelves in Matty Wishnow's documentary, The Last Critic (no Seattle dates yet, so I'm thankful I was able to catch a screening in Olympia). The two films would make for a good double bill, especially in Seattle and Minneapolis. 

Whether RADIOHEART will attract as much attention outside of these cities, I couldn't say, but there's appeal here for anyone interested in alternative music and radio, particularly in the transition from analog to digital. Just like record stores and music magazines, many community-oriented stations, like Rev 105, have fallen by the wayside over the years, but KEXP has kept plugging away through thick and thin--I left during an especially thin time. 

Fittingly, the film is overflowing with music from local acts, like KEXP faves Mudhoney and Deep Sea Diver, post-punk progenitors Television and Suicide, and even Prince himself, represented by "Irresistible Bitch," a 1982 dance floor-filler Kevin played in public before anyone else. Props to music supervisor Mike Turner who secured over two dozen songs, not counting Moby's instrumental tracks.  

A cynic might say that the film plays like an extended promo reel for the man and the station, and they wouldn't be wrong, but I'm not so sure that's a bad thing, not least when the central subject is anything but cynical.  

The Stranger's SIFF review also notes that there's no mention of streaming's less advantageous effects. Fair point. I believe that that's outside the scope of the profile, but it isn't a small thing--especially to your average musician. 

To his credit, Kevin appears to have had the best of intentions in focusing on access. I don't think he could have predicted the damage Spotify would inflict--not least its $700m investment in AI-powered drone weaponry. 

Right: Kevin with a record I added in 1991 (that's my writing in the upper right)

At heart--pun intended--the co-directors have made a film about someone with whom you'll enjoy spending time, especially if you share Kevin's interests. Beyond the candid interviews with their subject and those who know him best, they've assembled countless photographs, personal snapshots, posters, promo spots, television segments--some from my employer, KCTS 9/Cascade PBS--and even entries from Kevin's journals. 

My attraction to KCMU in the first place was rooted in the belief that every kind of music was valid, and not just the obvious alt-rock suspects (KCMU had already transitioned from college to public by the time I got there). 

Kevin has brought that belief with him everywhere he's gone--from Minneapolis to Seattle to Reykjavik--and that's absolutely worth celebrating, so thanks to Kevin Cole for keeping the faith for over 50 years, and to Pete Hilgendorf and Andrew Franks for honoring that passion with such care. 

Click here for SIFF Dispatch #5: Times of Trouble (and Sparks of Joy) in Body Blow and Valentina.

RADIOHEART: The Drive and Times of DJ Kevin Cole plays Tues, May 12, 6:30pm; Fri, May 15, 3:30pm; and Sun, May 17, 8pm at the Uptown. Pete Hilgendorf, Andrew Franks, Producer Rebecca Staffel, and Kevin Cole scheduled to attend. Images: KEXP (Kevin by Charina Pitzel and on RSD 2015), Radioheart stills and screen shots (Kevin in B&W, with Shawn, and with crazy hair), and Kurt Schlosser / GeekWire (Kevin in the racks).

SIFF 2026 Dispatch #3: Aberdeen-Born Actor/Director Mia Moore Puts a Lo-Fi, Queer Spin on Sci-Fi in Her Debut, Again Again

AGAIN AGAIN 

(Mia Moore and Heather Ballish, USA, 2026, 99 minutes) 

I've never seen myself truly represented on screen. I've never seen a trans woman who's allowed to go on a journey that's informed by her transness but not obsessed with her transness… The kind of film I needed when I was closeted and alone. The kind of film I needed when I didn't even know what I was.--Mia Moore in her Indiegogo pitch

Lilly Wachowski, most recently of 2021's The Matrix Resurrections, executive produced this crowd-funded sci-fi romantic drama about Agatha (co-director Mia Moore, who appeared in Vera Drew's The People's Joker), a punky, smalltown trans woman who was stuck in a time loop for 10 years. 

If Moore never pushes the central metaphor too hard, the time loop appears to represent time Agatha wasn't truly trans; time she wasn't fully herself.

When the loop comes to an end, however, she has no idea how to kickstart her life--or how to prevent something like it from happening again. She just knows she wants to spend it with petite Australian-born singer Tess (Aria Taylor), with whom she grew up in Moore's native Aberdeen, Washington–back when she knew she liked girls even if she hadn't transitioned yet. 

They love each other, but find it easier to be friends than lovers to the extent that Tess gets engaged to Jason (rising Seattle actor Jon Meggison), which pleases her judgmental mother (Nicole Spacek), who never liked Agatha. There also appears to be an unpoken class divide between the two. 

Granted, it's possible some of these things are in Agatha's head, since she's pretty confused, not so much about her trans identity, but about most everything else. A predilection for drinking whiskey and smoking pot isn't helping, though she doesn't have anyone or anything else to whom to turn, except for Tess. If the relationship between the women is well established, a few details about how they earn their keep would have been welcome.   

Moore and Taylor have plenty of chemistry, though Agatha's heart-to-heart with Naomi (British actress Abigail Thorn), a trans record store worker more settled in her life, provides the most affecting moment in the film. In the end, though, Again Again is no tragedy, and the ending suggests that Agatha may be ready to plunge full-bore into the future. 

After at least 12 years in Aberdeen, Mia Moore now calls Los Angeles home, but her first full-length feature is a local film through and through and will, ideally, encourage more trans stories rooted in the Pacific Northwest.

I'm not sure how Wachowski came aboard, but it may have something to do with a statement Moore made to Pink News in 2023: "I really respect queer indie cinema from the 1990s and 2000s, especially lesbian films, where it's like, they're lesbians but it's a heist movie." (Bound, anyone?) "Sometimes," she concludes, "we get to be goofy little critters stuck in a time loop."

Click here for SIFF 2026 Dispatch #4: Music Heals in RADIOHEART: The Drive & Times of DJ Kevin Cole

 

Again Again plays on Mon, May 11, at 6:30pm, Tues, May 12, at 3pm, and Fri, May 15, at 8pm. All at the Uptown. Mia Moore, Producer Cliff Noonan, and Exec Producer Ian Schrank scheduled to attend. Images from The Daily World (Mia Moore/Mia Moore Marchant) and SIFF (Moore and Aria Taylor).